Sin asunto

Mar Nov 11 20:19:18 CET 2008

t
only about making a stand against the violation of the city in which we
live, but also about us. They could just as easily be called Los Rodriguez,
or Los Smith. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Yet as we walk
forward into what may be new times of hope, it was a member of Los Martinez
who told me that, "We can't do everything". It is true: the wars won't stop
overnight. The mobile phones in our pockets will still signal violence in
Africa. The speculators and the greedy politicians won't desist from trying
to fuck us over at every turn just because we ask them not to. In spite of
this knowledge, or maybe because of it, the core message of Los Martinez is
to look a little longer at ourselves in the mirror each day.

The *feeling* we are meant to experience when we look at the bright colours
of their art, standing out against the backdrop of grey and greed that
surrounds it, is that those colours are inside us. If we want to pay
anything other than lip service to change, then it must start here: at home=
,
in ourselves. The hearts on the wall are our own. It is up to us to
rediscover them. And it is then our responsibility to let them sing, write,
paint, shout or cry out in any way that affirms our collective struggle to
remain part of the original and only truly abiding culture: humanity.

Que seamos m=E1s despiertos. Que seamos m=E1s conscientes. Que seamos m=E1s=
 vivos.
*M=E1s Amor.*

*Some links:*
IMC:BARCELONA INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER barcelona.indymedia.org/
BONPASTOR: bonpastor.noblogs.org/
BARCELONETA: labarcelonetaambelaiguaalcoll.blogspot.com/
POBLENOU: www.poblenou.org/ Y CAN RICART: www.canricart.info/
ESPLUGUES DE LLOBREGAT: www.moviments.net/noalplacaufec/
REPENSAR BARCELONA: www.sitesize.net/
A BARCELONA LA PARTICIPACIO CANTA!: straddle3.net/participacio/
OUTSIDE22@: outside22.blogspot.com/
www.artebastardo.blogspot.com
*SUPORTTOTAL* DOCUMENTARY: blip.tv/file/1454507/

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<div class=3D"gmail_quote"><h1>G4 SUMMIT</h1>
=09=09=09=09=09<h2><a href=3D"http://bcnweek.com/feature69=
.html" target=3D"_blank">Graffiti, Guns, Globalization and Ganas</a>=
</h2>
=09=09=09=09=09by <a href=3D"http://www.bcnweek.com/contributors.html#si=
mon" name=3D"11daee8341d62360_simon" target=3D"_blank">Simon Friel</a>. BCN=
 Week 
=09=09=09=09=09If you ask somebody to define exact=
ly what
&quot;subculture&quot; means, they will probably look
at you askance for proffering such a banal
question, then promptly fail to give you anything
like a substantial and well-defined
answer. If you look it up online, you will
come across a lot of waffle that ties itself up
in knots by relying excessively on the word
&quot;culture&quot;. You will find words like subversion,
Punks, ambivalent, non-domestic, Goths, negative,
and tribes; and you will be a much
better man than I if, from it all, you can derive
any real meaning or significance.
=09=09=09=09=09When it&#39;s too difficult to decipher=
 the meanings
of words, it is often easier to take solace
in images. As I walk through the streets
of the city, I notice colours jumping out at
me and dragging my attention away from
the grey. The walls of the city are screaming
out, looking for answers that I&#39;m not sure I
have. The walls are talking, and I think we
ought to listen.
=09=09=09=09=09The images on the page opposite are all
brought to you by Los Martinez, a group that
lives and breathes on the same streets you
traverse. But the identity of the group is less
important than engaging with its discourse.
If you look closely, you will see that their
work has real content, something you won&#39;t
find in &quot;subcultures&quot; defined largely by fads
and pouty posturing. Interacting with Los
Martinez, you are moved uncomfortably
from your previous position of impassive
alienation. The sharp nip of recognition you feel when
you look at their work, particularly their
hearts, makes you an active part of a systematic
and structured opposition to the dominant
culture you were ineffectually loving
to hate. You have become a true outsider.
You have moved away from subculture and
joined the ranks of a counterculture.
=09=09=09=09=09One hundred years ago, the city of Barc=
elona
and its people passed through a period
of great poverty. A poor population
struggled to live and, in extreme cases, starved
to death. The ratio of food spending
against housing spending was around 5:1.
People lived in times of economic hardship
and misery, but for the most part they could
afford to pay for the roofs over their heads.
In modern day Barcelona, the situation has
been completely reversed. A normal person,
earning 1000=80 a month, could survive spending
only 200=80 a month on food, but would
be very hard pushed to cover the cost of owning
an apartment in the city with the remaining
800=80. Most people won&#39;t starve in
La Millor Botiga del Mon, but if you&#39;re not
rich, you had better look for another place
to rest your head at night. It is in the reality
of this environment that Los Martinez are
attempting to offer an alternative message
to the people of the city.
=09=09=09=09=09Los Martinez are a group of like-minded
individuals who found each other by chance
as they worked individually on the streets,
and who then joined together to produce
work in which we find a seamless fusion of
art and social commentary. They are social warriors, committed to reclaimin=
g
public space as our own by turning
it into a free gallery. But the artistic beauty of
their message should not fool you into taking
their work lightly. This collective group of creative friends
is not only fighting to reclaim the city&#39;s public
spaces. In the barrios where speculation
and big business are displacing residents,
tearing down buildings, and trying
to negate the rich history of the places they
wish to reinvent in their own selfish image,
Los Martinez are also out on the front lines
alongside real people.
=09=09=09=09=09In Bon Pastor, Los Martinez painted wal=
ls
alongside ni=F1os gitanos del barrio, in
protest of the forceful eviction of families
from the &quot;casas baratas&quot;. In Barceloneta,
they worked with the vecinos del barrio in
their fight against the Ayuntamiento&#39;s Plan
de Ascensores, a scheme that would see elderly
people and families evicted from their
homes. But it is perhaps in Los Martinez&#39;s
old home of Poblenou where their fight has
been the most intense, and it is this place
that best highlights the unrelenting determination
of their struggle and their continued
belief in it. Nevertheless, it is here, too,
where the odds against the success of their
movement can seem largest.
=09=09=09=09=09In Can Ricart and Poblenou, Los Martine=
z
were part of the group of 3,500 vecinos
and friends of the neighbourhood that protested
against the monster that is 22 en . This
privately-funded, local-government-supported
venture has displaced the majority
of Poblenou&#39;s artistic community, as well as
many families who had lived for generations
in what was tradit ional ly one of
Barcelona&#39;s few authentic working-class
neighbourhoods. It&#39;s an ugly thing in itself,
and a pattern that&#39;s becoming all too familiar,
but 22@ is made even uglier because
many of the companies that operate out of
this new state-of-the-art business park are
ones that deal directly in, or have links to,
the manufacture of arms. Indra, whose president
heads the committee of 22@, is the
world&#39;s biggest non-US supplier of military
equipment to the world&#39;s largest military
machine, the Army of the United States of
America.
=09=09=09=09=09The protests in Poblenou, like so many
others, were to no avail, and the pain felt in
this particular defeat has been worsened
recently by the attempted validation of 22@
and its presence in the neighbourhood
through the three-day Inside22@ festival,
run under the artistic direction of Niu and
in direct collaboration with the 22@ committee.
How is it possible that Niu, one of
the groups that originally fought alongside
residents and other artists against 22@, are
now actively encouraging the presence of
their conquerors in a celebration that is
such an incredibly frivolous and insensitive
rewriting of history?
=09=09=09=09=09But wait. It is too easy to point finge=
rs at
the speculators, propagators of war, and
those who are completely consumed by the
capitalist ethos of &quot;More&quot;. If we look closely
at the hands we point with, we might note,
uncomfortably, that they too have a red tinge.
As literate people living in a powerful
Western democracy, we are all complicit in
the ills of the world, and in one way or another
there is undoubtedly blood spilled in
our name every day. Maybe Niu, in the wake
of 22@&#39;s successful establishment, decided,
as so many of us do, that this is the way
things work in the world and there&#39;s nothing
they can do about it.
=09=09=09=09=09But wait. It is too easy to point finge=
rs at
the speculators, propagators of war, and
those who are completely consumed by the
capitalist ethos of &quot;More&quot;. If we look closely
at the hands we point with, we might note,
uncomfortably, that they too have a red tinge.
As literate people living in a powerful
Western democracy, we are all complicit in
the ills of the world, and in one way or another
there is undoubtedly blood spilled in
our name every day. Maybe Niu, in the wake
of 22@&#39;s successful establishment, decided,
as so many of us do, that this is the way
things work in the world and there&#39;s nothing
they can do about it.
=09=09=09=09=09Perhaps this elephant in the corner has
allowed an overriding sense of apathy to fester
within all of us; an apathy and a complacency
that seem to have become the most
prominent and bitter cultural capital of the
day. We have been tricked into thinking that
we are redundant and unable to offer any
resistance to the forces of the world that
shape and control our shadow lives. We
have accepted our defeat and fallen out of
love with the unfamiliar faces that stare
back at us blankly from the other side of the
mirror. Politicians don&#39;t listen to us. Wars
are fought despite our Saturday afternoon
marches against them. Nothing we do makes a difference, so
why should we care? In discussions with
members of Los Martinez, I saw that even
they feel the weight of capitalism&#39;s demand
for conformity. Though they fight for others selflessly, seeking
no personal promotion through their acts,
their lifestyle choice comes with the cost of
being reminded every day that they don&#39;t
own a house, or have 2.5 children, or a job
that they can put on a resume. That they have
chosen an &quot;unconventional&quot; life.
=09=09=09=09=09From what I see, Los Martinez keep doin=
g
what they do because they care, not only
about making a stand against the violation
of the city in which we live, but also about
us. They could just as easily be called Los Rodriguez,
or Los Smith. A rose by any other name
would smell as sweet. Yet as we walk forward
into what may be new times of hope, it was
a member of Los Martinez who told me that,
&quot;We can&#39;t do everything&quot;. It is true: the wars
won&#39;t stop overnight. The mobile phones in our pockets will
still signal violence in Africa. The speculators
and the greedy politicians won&#39;t desist
from trying to fuck us over at every turn just
because we ask them not to. In spite of this
knowledge, or maybe because of it, the core
message of Los Martinez is to look a little
longer at ourselves in the mirror each day.
=09=09=09=09=09The feeling we are meant to expe=
rience
when we look at the bright colours of their
art, standing out against the backdrop of
grey and greed that surrounds it, is that those
colours are inside us. If we want to pay
anything other than lip service to change,
then it must start here: at home, in ourselves.
The hearts on the wall are our own. It
is up to us to rediscover them. And it is then
our responsibility to let them sing, write,
paint, shout or cry out in any way that affirms
our collective struggle to remain part of
the original and only truly abiding culture:
humanity.
=09=09=09=09=09Que seamos m=E1s despiertos. Que seamos
m=E1s conscientes. Que seamos m=E1s vivos. 
M=E1s Amor.
=09=09=09=09=09Some links: 
=09=09=09=09=09IMC:BARCELONA INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER <a href=3D"http://ba=
rcelona.indymedia.org/" target=3D"_blank">barcelona.indymedia.org/</a> 
BONPASTOR: <a href=3D"http://bonpastor.noblogs.org/" target=3D"_blank">bonp=
astor.noblogs.org/</a> 
BARCELONETA: <a href=3D"http://labarcelonetaambelaiguaalcoll.blogspot.com/"=
 target=3D"_blank">labarcelonetaambelaiguaalcoll.blogspot.com/</a> 
POBLENOU: <a href=3D"http://www.poblenou.org/" target=3D"_blank">www.poblen=
ou.org/</a> Y CAN RICART: <a href=3D"http://www.canricart.info/" target=3D"=
_blank">www.canricart.info/</a> 
ESPLUGUES DE LLOBREGAT: <a href=3D"http://www.moviments.net/noalplacaufec/"=
 target=3D"_blank">www.moviments.net/noalplacaufec/</a> 
REPENSAR BARCELONA: <a href=3D"http://www.sitesize.net/" target=3D"_blank">=
www.sitesize.net/</a> 
A BARCELONA LA PARTICIPACIO CANTA!: <a href=3D"http://straddle3.net/partici=
pacio/" target=3D"_blank">straddle3.net/participacio/</a> 
OUTSIDE22@: <a href=3D"http://outside22.blogspot.com/" target=3D"_blank">ou=
tside22.blogspot.com/</a> 
<a href=3D"http://www.artebastardo.blogspot.com/" target=3D"_blank">www.art=
ebastardo.blogspot.com</a> 
SUPORTTOTAL DOCUMENTARY: <a href=3D"http://blip.tv/file/1454507/" ta=
rget=3D"_blank">blip.tv/file/1454507/</a>
</div>

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